1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a control device of a printer, and relates more particularly to a printer control device, a printing system, and a control method that can clear unnecessary data left in the printer due to interruption of a process, for example, without depending on an operation by the user.
2. Related Art
Printers normally execute printing processes based on print data sent from a host device, and the process may be interrupted for some reason occurring during the printing process. For example, the printing process is interrupted when a problem such as a paper jam occurs in the printer, or when a printer cover is opened.
When the printing process is thus interrupted, print data that has not been processed yet remains stored in the printer, and the printing process is typically repeated from the beginning of the print job after operation resumes. As a result, the print data that is left in memory is unnecessary data, referred to herein as trash data, and if this trash data is not deleted, it will be unnecessarily printed again after operation resumes, resulting in wasted printing.
Various efforts have been made to solve this problem of wasted printing. The printer described in JP-A-2004-130784, for example, executes a process of stopping printing, discarding the received print data to a code indicating a specific break point, and sending a cancel data request to the host, for example, in response to a cancel printing operation performed by pressing a button on the operating panel.
One example of unnecessary data being left in the printer occurs when the printer cannot quickly detect that a print job was cancelled and print data for the print job remains in the print spooler on the host device. This situation is preferably handled by a function on the host side.
The effect of this problem is particularly great when relatively large amounts of image data are used, such as when printing labels, and the image data remains as unnecessary data in memory, and a more reliable solution is required.
Preferably, such unnecessary data can be deleted without requiring the user to perform a specific operation.